The invention relates to a storage device for sheet-like, flexible objects, such as bank notes.
A device of this type intended for the storage of bank notes has been known from British Patent No. A-2,071,059 wherein the bank notes, depending on the design, are wound onto the storage reel on a belt unwound from a belt reel or between two belts unwound from a joint belt reel or from respectively one belt reel. In the type of design with two belts and two belt reels, the drive arrangement includes a drive mechanism, not described in detail, with a speed-controllable motor that is to drive the storage reel in the winding and, respectively, unwinding directions and, at the same time, the belt reels in the unwinding and, respectively, winding directions so that a braking force acts on the reel or reels revolving in each case in the unwinding direction, which force inhibits the rotation of such reel or reels, in order to keep the belts under synchronously uniform tension. This state of the art does not reveal how this is to be achieved by speed control of the motor or by means of the drive mechanism which latter is merely mentioned without detailed data, especially since the traveling motion as well as the tension of each belt depend not only on the number of revolutions of the belt reel and the storage reel, but also on the peripheral speed of the coils, the latter speed being determined by the number of revolutions and the respective outer diameter of the coils, increasing during windup and decreasing during unwinding; in addition, the outer diameter of the storage coil also varies depending on the thickness of the bank notes and on the mutual spacings at which these bank notes are wound up in succession.
In a storage device of a similar type, likewise comprising a storage reel and two belt reels (U.S. Pat. No. A-2,981,492) wherein, for storing the objects, only the storage reel is driven by a motor and, for retrieval of previously stored objects, only the belt reels are driven manually, the belt reels are driven, for attaining equal tensions of the belts, by way of a differential gear (differential). In this arrangement, during the storage operation, the number of revolutions of the storage reel is constant so that the belt tension becomes higher with an increase in the diameter of the storage coil and, at the same time, the braking moment exerted on the belt coils by the differential gear idling at that time becomes smaller.